Godspeed Read Online Free PDF Page B

unrelenting night.
    “If I did, I must warn you that there would be sacrifices to be made. A great cost paid, by you, to buy the time.”
    I looked away, just wishing now more than anything that I could sleep. His strong hand grasped hold of my shoulder and shook me as I faltered.
    “No, you must listen to me, we…” He quickly withdrew his hand and rose to his full height again. He stepped back and raised his eyes up to focus on the ceiling for a moment. Finally, he lowered them again and inhaled deeply, determined to force himself to return to a more composed state. “We are running out of options. The question you must answer is, do you want me to try?”
    I could not answer. The truth was I did not know what I wanted. What life was there for me if I should live? I still had nowhere to go and no family to belong to. What did existence mean, if only to wither in pain and wander alone?
    I felt the air in my chest desert me and was unable to take in any more to replace it. A slow, long exhalation sounded within my ears — I was certain I was hearing my own dying breath.
    My eyes slipped closed, and as they did I felt warm, strong arms gather around me. He picked me up and carried me off. I knew not where or for what purpose, but neither, again, did I care.
    “Should I even attempt to save her?” he whispered, and I wondered to whom he was directing the question; himself, or whatever higher power he may yet have faith in. “How high a price is too high?”
    I wished I had the strength to plead with him now. Feeling his arms around me, even just this way, made what I wanted undeniably clear.
    Yes, save me , I thought. For the love of all that is good and right in the world, please, save me.
    I heard one thing more before everything around me muffled and died away: the sound of his voice, calling repeatedly and at very high volume, the name of Schuyler Algernon.

C HAPTER 6
    WITH SHOCKING SPEED, I was wholly immersed, and struggled as if to breathe my last below the heaving sea of reality.
    This awareness was nothing akin to the peaceful return from sleep one feels at gentle daybreak. There were no birds to herald morning. No streaming light of the sun's warmth peeking in through the edges of slight, rustled curtains. It was the violent, wrenching sensation of being ripped away from dreaming — from a place so safe and warm, no sane being would ever willingly vacate it.
    The body that imprisoned my living soul felt foreign to me now; the soothing presence of the fireplace in Schuyler's bright red room surpassed by the feeling I was being consumed by the unquenchable thirst of the flame. It bolted as lightning through every inch of skin, shred of muscle, and the very marrow of bone. I felt not near the fire now, I burned in it.
    I tried to scream but there was something in my mouth — against my lips — between my teeth.
    It was a strap of sorts and smelled of newly tanned leather, though it was difficult to make out any other tastes or smells beyond the bitter, copper trails of my own blood on my swollen tongue.
    My entire form convulsed. My teeth clamped down hard against the strap, and I made a sound that I had never heard from any being before in my life: not man, woman, or even pitiful animal mortally wounded in the hunt and near to death.
    My eyes, which I forced open by sheer strength of will, refused to comply with my directive wishes and remained maddeningly beyond my control. I watched the ceiling quickly scroll past as my irises rolledup and back; another wave of heat and pain seared through my weakened, fragile flesh.
    I shivered and somehow managed to shake, strapped though I was to a hard, narrow table in this space that appeared to be more laboratory than operating theater. The room was large, cold, and echoed with the sound of Godspeed's maniacally murmuring voice as he uttered words I hadn't a prayer to understand.
    Even without that understanding, everything in me reacted to the sound, and internally